035: Andrew Follan – Photography Success 101, Zig When Others are Zagging

035: Andrew Follan – Photography Success 101, Zig When Others are Zagging

Andrew Hellmich: And today, my special guest is Andrew Follan from The Follans, no, they're not a rock band. They're actually a successful husband and wife photography team in Sydney, Australia. We talk weddings, portraits, pricing, websites, what's working, what's not, and how they managed to keep a nice, balanced life and still raise three kids, run this successful business and have time to do the things they love to do. That interview coming up in just a minute. Hey, Andrew. Welcome to the podcast.

Andrew Follan: Hi, Andrew. Least we won't forget each other's names.

Andrew Hellmich: Should be easy today, should be easy. Mate, do you want to start by telling my listener a little bit about you and your business and what you guys focus on specifically?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, sure. So my name is Andrew Follan and one co-owner of The Follans Photography business, I shoot with my wife, Sarah. We've been going for about eight years now, and for the last probably six to seven years, we were almost, we were focused almost 100% on weddings. The last couple of years we've sort of got back to what we originally wanted to do, which was working with kids a lot more. So we're sort of trying to balance the business out between weddings and portraits with families and specifically kids. And that's pretty much what we do.

Andrew Hellmich: Awesome. So, so was it you that sort of started this business and then Sarah came on board? Or are you both photographers? How does that work?

Andrew Follan: Basically, originally, I was into photography, like, you know, a lot of photographers. We have it as a bit of a hobby to start with. I had what we call a real job, which was working a lot longer than nine to five, I had to wear a tie. And I absolutely hate wearing ties. So one day I came home from work and had a particularly bad day, and we just, I think I actually ripped my tie off, throw a bit of a tantrum and just said, "I hate this job". And Sarah said, "Well, why don't you quit, and let's do something that makes us both happy", and we're a bit nervous, because we just had our second child. We got three kids now, but we just had our second child at the time, but it took me about five minutes to accept her offer. We went in the next, I went in the next day. Quit my job. Two weeks later, we finished it up with no, we didn't actually plan on doing photography at that stage. We just sort of knew that I had to get out of that that job. Had about two weeks off, sitting in my pajamas, playing some Xbox and chilling out a little bit. And then after two weeks, after a fortnight went past and I didn't get a paycheck, I went, "Okay, now, got to work out how to pay the mortgage and pay for this little baby we've got." So we sort of said, "Yeah, look, we've always been in photography. Why don't we just try to make that work?" So we started looking into it a little bit and just made the decision, you know, on the spot, really, just to become photographers. As I said before, originally, we were planning on doing mostly working with kids and working with family, family photography. I went to a couple of events like AIPP organized events really, really early on, met some, some great guys that sort of took me under their wings a little bit, actually, and just got on really well with them. And they helped me out a lot, and were happy for me to sort of pick their brain and second shoot with them. They gave me a lot of gear advice before we bought sort of the gear that we needed, we started a second shooting for a couple of them at weddings. And just actually fell in love with shooting weddings and just went, "This is actually what we want to do." So we got the gear and went from there, and the rest, as they say, is history. So we sort of did it a little bit different to a lot of photographers. A lot of levels will sort of start part time, and we just jumped in, you know, full ball, and went full time and made it work.

Andrew Hellmich: I've got, I've got like, thousand questions that just hit me all at once there. So, so you quit the day job, and did you have a, did you have a nest egg or a bunch of savings? Because you had two kids, I'm guessing, a mortgage, or at least rent, and you live in Sydney, so it's not cheap. What? What were you thinking?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, I was thinking I hated my job. So we had two kids. We just had our second kid. So I think, I think Sienna may have been about two, less than two years old. Yeah, then we had a mortgage. We owned a place in Baylor, in the hills area of Sydney. We didn't have a lot of savings. We sort of, we had a little bit, not a great amount, but I think, I think a lot of it just came down to our lifestyle and what we wanted out of life. And, you know, working the job that I was working in, yeah, we were earning great money, like earning a lot more money than we do now as photographers, you know, the lifestyle wasn't there, and we just weren't, weren't happy, you know, and just never seen the kids, and not the type of dad that I sort of wanted to be. So we actually, after we made the decision to go ahead with it, we worked out how long we'd be able to survive with not making an income. We tried to work out how long it would take us to make an income from photography.

Andrew Hellmich: Were you thinking 12 months at that stage? Like to, because, I mean, wedding lead times are notoriously long.

Andrew Follan: They are, they are. But we came to decision quickly that we needed to have our deposits for the wedding a little bit higher than most people. So you know, as long as you're booking weddings and you've got your deposit, like our deposits are $1,500 so as long as you're booking weddings that that deposit actually sort of, you know, helps a lot of the times, especially through the quieter times when you might not be, like, over winter and that sort of stuff, like, deposits get you through. So I think we were thinking about sort of eight to nine months where we could survive on. We actually ended up making the decision to sell the house. So we sold our house. It was an old cottage. My old man's a builder. So we gutted it all, renovated it all, and sort of went from there. So we sold the house and just started renting, which sort of gave us basically the funding to start the business. And we took, basically, we took a year, about a year, really, to sort of be supporting ourselves through the photography.

Andrew Follan: It sounds like an incredible risk, but, I mean, you must have really hated that job to jump in the way you did.

Andrew Follan: Yeah, it was a big risk. I guess our fallback was that if it doesn't work out, then I can just go and get another job. And, you know, can't be anywhere. It wasn't a bad job I was in. It was just very long hours and just didn't give us the lifestyle we wanted. As I said before, like, I'm very much a, I like what I'd like to try to be a dad that's at home and a dad that can see their kids achieve things. And I think it always got on my nerves when I had to ask permission to go and see my kid get an award at school or something like that. So yeah, I think that was the main drive behind it.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, here 100% there's, there's nothing that beats the lifestyle of working for yourself, that's for sure.

Andrew Follan: Yeah, there's a lot of different stresses involved, but the life..

Andrew Hellmich: Definitely. So tell me at that, so this is about eight years ago. Was Sarah actually into photography then? Or she's, she's learned and picked up since you decided to jump in?

Andrew Follan: Yes. Okay, so Sarah wasn't in photography at all actually. Every time we went anywhere, like I used to take some photos, she never really, even really knew how to use a camera to be honest. She was on maternity leave from her job, so we did have that to fall back on as well. Like, if we needed to, she could go back to her job after maternity leave. Fortunately, that never had to happen, so we didn't have to. She didn't have to, she didn't have to go back to her job, which was good and yeah, and just along the way, like once we started shooting weddings, once we sort of started working out our packages, now pricing a little bit better, and sort of got a bit more established, we found that it was good to offer a second shooter. So we actually had a couple of family and friends weddings that we shot within that first year. And Sarah, you know, was always there for those. And I sort of gave Sarah a camera and just said, you know, "Just play around, see what you want to do." Didn't need to rely on her photos for anything. After the first wedding, Sarah said, exactly same thing. She goes, "I love this, this, I want to do this, like, train me, teach me." So just sort of went from there. So we really did, we just, I sort of taught Sarah what I knew, if that was good or bad, I'm not too sure. But since then, she's, she's created her own style, and I think forgotten everything I actually told her, but that's okay, but you know, so, um, yeah, so she went from there, and then we brought her into the business, probably about three, about three years after we started the business, we really started marketing it as the two of us, before then, it was just me.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so was it was a business called The Follans back then, or you had a name change?

Andrew Follan: No, the business was. It was called, very unoriginal, The Follan Photography, like a lot of photographers do, unfortunately, you know, for such a creative field, I think that the names of businesses, you know, it's always made me laugh that we all just use our names, or we all just use our surname and photography sort of thing. So, yeah, no, that was just following photography. And that actually went only up until about a year and a half ago, when, when we decided we really wanted to start to set ourselves apart from everybody else, and that was a driving force behind the name change. We, you know, as I said, everyone had their surname and following and then, sorry, their surname and photography, or just their name. So we wanted something a little bit different. And we realized that a lot of our clients would actually refer us on to their friends, just as The Follans. They would just say, "Well, we had The Follans shoot our wedding", and then they would say, "It's Follans photography." And we sort of thought much, much easier if we were just The Follans, because that's how people are talking about us anyway. So, yeah, so that's, that's where that came from.

Andrew Hellmich: I like it. It's cool. It's a nice, a nice bit of branding, isn't it? That does separate you from the other photographers.

Andrew Follan: It does. It does. I think, you know, a lot of, still, a lot of our clients, come from the internet, when they, when they're looking at photographers, you know, and they might see at least, let's say, on bridal blog or something like that, or a directory, they might see a list of photographers names, and every photographer looks the same, and then they see The Follans. So it does stand out. It's a little bit different, you know, when we look at our directories, we see it, and we think, "Okay, that looks different." So that's a big part of what Sarah and I do. We always, we always strive to do, not always. It's not always a good thing, but we always strive to do things differently to what a lot of other people do.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure, I like that. Now I do, I want to delve a little bit deeper into your website, because it's a little bit different, I reckon, to most photographers websites that I see.

Andrew Follan: Yeah, it is.

Andrew Hellmich: So I'm going to leave that for a minute, because I still want to just explore a little bit more of that past. So when you first started and you decided that you're passionate about weddings, and I can see you increased your cash flow pretty quickly and easily by having a large deposit. I think that's a great idea. Is, was that Sarah's idea or yours?

Andrew Follan: I'm not gonna let her take credit for everything. I think at the start it was, I think it was my idea. Sarah didn't have too much to do with the business, she sort of did the books and that, because I think, I mean, it was something that I learned from other, again, from other photographers, from networking with at the very early stages, networking with some more experienced photographers, and learning little things like that, straight off the bat, which really helped out a lot.

Andrew Follan: Okay, I don't think there's still many photographers will be charging that sort of deposit. I don't think, I don't think that's a common thing, do people balk at that when you tell them it's a $1,500 upfront to, I guess you call it a booking fee?

Andrew Follan: Well, we just call the deposit, but, yeah, we should probably call it a booking fee. I mean, I think there's a bit of a debate about deposit or not, but we just say, we just use the word deposit. I think it makes that much of a difference. No, we haven't, not really. No. I mean, I think if people are going to book you, they generally will book sort of on your terms, like I can honestly, I mean, you know, there's obviously discussions about price and things like that with clients, but I can honestly say there's never been one client that's ever not booked us or told us that's the reason anyway, because of the deposit, or has sort of questioned it at all, so.

Andrew Hellmich: Great. Okay.

Andrew Follan: Doesn't make a difference to us.

Andrew Hellmich: Good. It's definitely gonna make an improvement to cash flow, that's for sure. Which is cool. Is it written anywhere? Or do you tell your clients that it's a non-refundable deposit?

Andrew Follan: We don't actually, no. I mean, it says it in our contract, like, so once they've signed the contract, but they pay the deposit before they sign the contract. I mean, we're, look, we're pretty laid back, like, I think if someone books you, generally with the clients that we have. If they're going to book, they book us, they book us. They're not sort of, that generally don't change their mind. I think in the eight years we really only had, I think, two cancel their weddings, and I think only one cancel the wedding, cancel us, but still have their wedding. And that's only been the last couple of years. Yeah, no. I think if something happened, and, you know, after they pay the deposit and they booked us, and before they had signed the contract, which is usually a two-week period, I mean, look, if they came back and said, "Oh, look, we've reconsidered and we don't want to sort of go ahead with it", we would just refund that deposit. I don't think it's fair to, if it's only been two weeks. I don't think it's fair to keep a deposit of somebody.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, sure. Okay, so going back to that early, that early start, where you jumped in with both feet, quit the job, and weddings were the passion. Did you? Did you guys consider doing portraits then just to generate more cash flow?

Andrew Follan: Well, that's actually what we wanted to do. So originally, when we started out, we wanted to do portraits, and we did a couple. We did, we did a few portraits. I really like, I really wanted to work with kids rather than families. You know, we wanted to do that, and then, so we did do a few of those in the first year. But, I mean, you know, we didn't really know what we were doing with portraits to be honest. I think there's a definite formula with portraits, which we're starting to understand now and starting to make a big difference with our portraits now, yeah, to be honest, like that first year and the second year, once we started shooting weddings, it sounds really weird, but it really took over your life, and the workflow and just the booking process, the meeting clients, the thinking about the weddings. We didn't really have that much time at that point to do anything else. I think I was sort of a bit relaxed as well, because I just left a full time job, and I was enjoying the freedom of not having to work every day if I didn't want to, as well. So, you know, what we were doing with the weddings was, was good enough for us at the time. So that sort of, you know that the lifestyle again, came into play there a bit. So yeah, we really just kept on focusing on weddings. And we were quite lucky that it took off for us quite quickly.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so why the shift now? Why focus more on portraits now? Because I can see that's a pretty big part of your website, and you told me as well. You know, you're looking to do more of them.

Andrew Follan: Yep. Couple of reasons. One, they're a great earner for us, our average for portraits is quite high. So for us, like money wisely, good. And two, we just wanted to get that balance out again, I think after shooting for seven or eight years of weddings, I don't necessarily want to shoot sort of 40 or 50 weddings a year. I'd like to continue to only shoot about 25 to 30 weddings a year, and then supplement that income with the portraits. And it just sort of gives you a different, different mindset when you're shooting a portrait in a family and kids. So it's sort of, um, yeah, it's just, I think it was just a good time for I think we just needed to not step back from the weddings, but just balance it out a little bit more.

Andrew Hellmich: I'd love to dive a little bit into the into the money side, so listeners get an idea of sort of where you guys are based and where you're sitting, I guess, in the market. But I know that you guys shoot together all the time. Does Sarah also join you on the portrait shoots?

Andrew Follan: No. So I just did the portrait shoots myself. Sarah doesn't shoot portraits, and I'll have to apologize at this point for Sarah not being here. She would have loved to, but we've the kids are still at home, so she's out looking after the kids while we do the interview. So she does apologize, and she's told me not say anything bad about her, but I'm..

Andrew Hellmich: Too late.

Andrew Follan: We'll try to fit something in there along the lines. Yeah, no, the portraits are just myself. So Sarah does the marketing for the portraits, so she's very good at marketing and coming up with ideas. So she sort of looks after the bookings, and then I look after the shooting and the sales of the portraits.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. And with the wedding side of thing is that a 50-50 split, or you both have your separate roles?

Andrew Follan: I mean, we have a bit of separate roles. Again, Sarah does a lot more of the marketing. Comes up with the ideas for marketing and comes up with, she does, sort of like our newsletters and that sort of stuff, meeting with clients. If we can, we both meet with clients, because we do brand ourselves as The Follans, and we do want to meet like we do want the bride and groom to meet both of us, because we wanted to book both of us in their packages, in regards to, sort of, if we do a pre-wedding session with clients like, I'll go and do that. So I still do most of the shooting, but on the wedding day, we shoot 50-50, on the whole day.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So what about processing? And, you know, all the after, after the wedding stuff, what happens there is that, is that you doing that? Or is that, Sarah, you split that as well?

Andrew Follan: No, I do all that. So I do all the editing, the album designs. Sarah used to do the album designs up until this year, and then now I've just taken that over, so I'm doing the album designs as well. We're just trying to balance our business and lifestyle out again. So we're trying to sort of have a little bit more set regiment in the way we work. So I'll actually work a little bit more during the week, and Sarah can then sort of be with the kids a little bit more. And then the following week we'll swap, and I'll sort of do all the kid running around, and Sarah will sort of do her work a little bit more. So we've just tried to balance things out a little bit more. Before this year, we were both just working so much, and I think it was, you know, getting to us a little bit. So we've just tried to sort of divvy the jobs up a little bit, not evenly, but actually more towards me. So I'm still sort of more of that sort of face of the business, and then Sarah, it gives Sarah time to actually do the marketing and, you know, expand the business the way we want it to go.

Andrew Hellmich: Plus, look after three kids.

Andrew Follan: That's a big thing. Looking after three kids isn't easy.

Andrew Hellmich: Oh, that's good. Mate, so to give people idea, an idea, so you guys are shooting about, is it 25 to 30 weddings?

Andrew Follan: Generally, a little bit more. So at the moment, it's been between about between 35 and 40 weddings a year, and we'd like to bring it down to about 25 to 30 next year.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, and what, have you got an idea of, sort of an average spend on a wedding package?

Andrew Follan: Yeah. So again, I had to apologize. Sarah does all the books, so she knows a lot more than I do about the numbers. I mean, we have a range of packages. I think that our average sale on a wedding is just over $5,000.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so that that would include full coverage digital files and an album, I'm guessing?

Andrew Follan: No, not always. So our album packages, they start at $6,500 and, so we have our lowest package, which is $3,300 that just me and just the digital files for the day. We don't have time limits, so we do shoot all day, but we've worked out that on average, we shoot nine and a half to 10 and a half hours per wedding, obviously, with some weddings, Asian weddings, you know, we might do a 14-16, hour days. But then some weddings, we'll just do seven and eight hour days as well. So it sort of balances itself out. Our second package is 4,500 which is Sarah, myself and the digital files. And then our third package is six and a half thousand dollars which is Sarah myself, pre-wedding session, the digital files and an album. And then we have a premium package on top of that, which is $8,000 which is basically the six and a half thousand dollar package with like, a couple of prints and some thank you or save the date cards thrown in as well.

Andrew Follan: What's your most popular package? You find people mostly go for the middle package?

Andrew Follan: They go for either the two middle ones, so the four and a half or the six and a half, we still do a lot of the album packages. We were very different to a lot of photographers, where we sell upfront rather than after the wedding. So for us to sell a $6,500 album package is quite good to start with. A lot of photographers will sort of have their album packages start at, say, four and a half or maybe five, and then try to sell the extra thousand or 1500 after the wedding. So we again, we always like to try to do things a little bit different and set ourselves apart, so that when clients are looking at all these different photographers, they look at us and go, "Okay, they are different. Like, the pricing structure is a little bit different". Yeah, it's more expensive, which can sometimes make it a bit of a harder sell. But once we get the clients in front of us, we can explain to them why it's more expensive up front.

Andrew Hellmich: So you're not showing them a 20 sided album, then designing a 50 side and doing a big upsell afterwards.

Andrew Follan: No, so we, I think our albums in our studios, I think we have two albums that we show them we're about to get a third, another type. We have two albums at the moment, one's a 36 page and one's a 40 page album. In the book package that they get, they get a 30 page album. So they do see a few extra pages in the studio, and we will say that these are a little bit bigger, and we'll show them what, like the extra six pages taken out would look like, like, just by sort of saying, take out these, these pages out of the album. And then, you know, like, same sort of thing. We will sort of say, like, we will design the album as we see the day. But we do, we do definitely try to keep it as close to their package as possible. And we do make a point of saying that within the sales process, because I think that one that builds trust with the clients. And I think again, once they go and meet with three or four different photographers, they hear the same thing from every photographer, and then they hear something different from us. It's a nice way of doing it. And essentially, all we're doing is doing that album upsell, but we're doing it before the wedding rather than after the wedding.

Andrew Hellmich: Do you ever come across couples or clients that will say, "You are a little bit more expensive. It's more than what we wanted to spend? We're hoping to spend around $4,000."

Andrew Follan: Yeah, yeah, all the time. Yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: So what's your response to that? Like, what do you say to them?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, look, I mean, we basically talk, we talk about the albums, and we do have the four and a half thousand dollar package. So we do sort of say, "Look, you know, we totally understand if you do want an album for four and a half thousand dollar and you know, you definitely can get photographers that will have those packages out there. The reason that ours are more is because we do offer you more pages upfront. We won't try to sell you pages after the wedding." And we do say like that, that's not a bad thing. We say a lot of photographers will use that system, which is perfectly okay with that, as long as you guys are aware that your photographer will do that. So there's nothing wrong with that process at all. But we, again, we use it as a way to set ourselves apart. We also talk up the quality of our albums. You know, our albums aren't cheap. We don't use cheap albums. We use very expensive albums.

Andrew Hellmich: Who do you use?

Andrew Follan: So we use a couple of different companies. One the Azuka Books, and one is Renaissance, which is an album from New York, a company from New York, you know, really just beautiful, beautiful leather albums. And look, there's a couple of reasons why we use the company from New York. One of the reasons is because they're from New York, and everything from New York is expensive. And when you say that to clients, they get excited.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice.

Andrew Follan: They're like, "Wow, our album's coming from New York. We love New York", you know? And it does, to be honest. I mean, they are, you know, I'm not selling a cheap album, and they do cost us, like, 900 or $1,000 to buy these albums for the client. So they are expensive albums, so we're not sort of selling them something that we're not saying is true. But when you really talk about New York and you talk about it, it does get them excited about that album and they want it. They say, "Oh, we want the New York album." We do use it as a bit of a sales sort of tool as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Cool. Can I change gears? Can I jump over to portraits with you for a minute?

Andrew Follan: You can.

Andrew Hellmich: You told me you're working to build that up now, and that's sort of a focus for you guys, so you can cut back on your wedding. So what are you doing? Well, first of all, what about numbers? So how, how many portraits are you shooting at the moment?

Andrew Follan: So this year, we will shoot about 30 portraits, which isn't a lot. We'd like to shoot more than that obviously, there's studios out there which are shooting hundreds, which we can't even come to understand how they gonna do it, but yeah, ideally we would like to shoot about 70 to 80 portraits next year.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay.

Andrew Follan: This year we're shooting about 30.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. And you said earlier that the money's good from portraits, so better than weddings?

Andrew Follan: It really depends. I mean, for the amount of time that you put into the job. Yeah, it's better than weddings. But, you know, we're getting paid more per hour for a portrait session than a wedding, but there's a, we have a better return from wedding. So we're actually earning, you know, if someone pays a six and a half thousand dollar wedding package, even though we're working longer hours, we've got more money in the bank after it.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, sure.

Andrew Follan: So, yeah, we're not getting paid as much per hour, but it's better for the bank balance. So that's why we sort of want to, we want to balance them out a little bit.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure, and it's better to have you working than surfing. That's what Sarah's thinking, is it? I hope not.

Andrew Follan: She's really keen. I'm a much happier, stress, less stressful person when I'm surfing, I'll tell you, Andrew, I went out surfing this morning, and I put this on Facebook today, and so some people might have seen it. You know, we went out this morning and there was literally me and one other guy out in the lineup. The surf wasn't amazing, but there was a couple of ways around. And this is in Sydney, which is unheard of, usually there's like 10 guys out, all of suddenly, we've literally got 20 dolphins just all around us, and they were jumping out of the water. They were surfing right next to us, and the two of us were just sitting there, just in order going, "This is amazing. This is just fantastic." And you know, at one point, like, a little wave came through, which we went to catch, and there's like, literally a dolphin on either side of us, inside the wave, like going straight past us.

Andrew Hellmich: Unreal. How big are they when they're next to you, they're massive?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, yeah, you know. And those little, those little baby ones, and those bigger ones, you know, coming out the way they hung around for about sort of 25 minutes. We didn't even catch any waves during that time. And just watching them, they were literally like, we could have, you know, put our hands out and touched them, which we didn't, you know. And then after the session, I went up, up the cliff, and was getting back in the car, and there's, like, these whales going straight past, you know, much further out, you could see them breaching in that and I'm just like, you know, that's why we do this job for, that's why I'm not in my tie anymore. I'm in board shorts, I mean, t-shirt. I'm in a wetsuit. I'm not wearing a tie. So, yeah, surfing is becoming, I hadn't surf, I used to surf every single day. We used to live at DY and right on the beach. Used to overlook the water, and now we live, you know, about 40 minutes from the beach. So I've just, you know, literally, in the last couple of months, got right back into it and getting, yeah, getting there as much as I can. So it's, it's definitely a good, good for the lifestyle. It's good for the head.

Andrew Hellmich: That's awesome. I know that the listener that's driving down the road on the way to another job, that hasn't quit that full time job yet that wants to go into photography, is thinking, "That's it. I'm getting out of this!", after hearing that story.

Andrew Follan: Yeah, you know, we could tell them a lot of stories. Why maybe they shouldn't as well. But, you know, it's, I think, I think the way we did it, by just dumping everything going full time, it's definitely a rarity in the industry. I don't think there's that, I absolutely, think there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing photography parttime before, you know, you can always have the goal to do it full time, but as a part time job, look, you know it, there's nothing wrong with that, I think. It's a smart way of doing it as well, especially if you've got family, you've got commitments, you know.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I could never have done what you did with the mortgage and the family. I had to go part time first and then, and then slowly did the transition. But, yeah, that's a that's awesome.

Andrew Follan: We're a little bit crazy though. We don't, we don't think things through all the time. We just do things well.

Andrew Hellmich: It's probably a good way to do it too sometimes, because it means sink or swim, isn't it?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, it makes it, make it, it does it does make you really, it puts the pressure on to make it work.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Follan: Yeah

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Let me bring it back to business for one minute.

Andrew Follan: Yeah. Sorry.

Andrew Hellmich: Not at all, not at all. With the portrait, so what's the, what's an average spend for a portrait for you guys?

Andrew Follan: Yep. So up until this point, our average sales for portraits has been $2,300, it will go down the more we, the more portraits that we do, and the different places that we attract our portrait clients from will start spending less. Up until this point, we've had very good referral base. We've gone back through our client base, through our weddings, and we know that they spend well on their wedding, so now they're spending well on their kids. So yeah, it's been, it's been a really, really high average for us at the moment, but we are prepared for that to go down a little bit the more portraits we do.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so what are you doing for marketing that's working as far as portraits? Or you haven't started that yet?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, no, we sort of started a little bit, to be honest, marketing for portraits is doing my head in, it's absolutely, for us anyway, it's nowhere near as easy as for weddings. Not saying weddings easy, it's, you know, that's becoming more difficult as the years go on as well. But up until this point, we've definitely marketed to our previous client base the most as a starting point that I think anyone that's start has been shooting weddings. But even just a couple of years, you've got a great client base there for family portraits or newborns. So we don't, you know, we're not great with newborns. I'm much, much better with kids that, I shouldn't say this, but kids that have personalities can actually show that, newborns do, but they do just lie there. So, you know, I don't have the patience for newborns. So we have a social photographer, Leanne. "Hi, Leanne" that shoots our newborns for us, and she's incredible. So she does all of that. We do the sale sessions for it. But yeah, you've got a great client base from your weddings to go back to for newborns or for family photography. So for a couple of years, we just went, basically, just went through our client base a couple of times, and that proved to be really good.

Andrew Follan: Email, phone and what did you do to contact them?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, emails, newsletters, so basically sending out offers or newsletters. I don't think I've ever actually called people about offers or anything like that at all. That's not really our style too much. We just recently did a Facebook promotion for the first time for portrait. So that was literally last month. So I don't know how that's gone in regards to sales yet, because we're just starting to shoot the sessions from that. So we'll see how we go. But we didn't. We made it a really attractive competition. Again, it was very different to a lot of photographers, so we actually gave away, I think we gave over 10 or 15 sessions, a couple of prints in there, but then the major prize was their session and iPad Mini with all of their photos loaded onto the iPad for them. So we really entice people to enter based on that big prize. And we got, you know, we got over 100 and 120-130 entries into that but more importantly, it boosted our client base, so the people that didn't win are now on our mailing list.

Andrew Hellmich: So to answer that competition, they basically had to enter their first name and email address and they join your mailing list. Is that the way that worked?

Andrew Follan: First of all, they have to like our Facebook page. So one of our goals from that was to get more Facebook likes. We're not massive on Facebook. We do, we do a bit, but, you know, I think we've only got, like, just under 600 likes. So it's not like we're into the thousands or anything that at all. But I think it's with Facebook, it's definitely more important to have people talking about you, rather than just having lots and lots of likes. So we've got, even though we don't have a lot big numbers, we've got sort of a nice, loyal sort of following, which is good. So that was one of the goals, and the other one so that put their first and last name in, their contact number, their email address. So yeah, we basically added them all, and they agree, obviously, to go on to your mailing list. So we've just sent out a newsletter, I think Sarah sent out yesterday in regards to Christmas sessions and sort of Christmas cards. So all of those people now will start getting these newsletters. So hopefully when they're ready, and they might not be straight away, it might be next year, might be the year after, but when they're ready, they'll would have received constant newsletters from us about portraits.

Andrew Hellmich: Just back to this competition. So once they enter their details and you draw out one winner, who wins the iPad and the photo shoot and the photos, what happens to the next couple of 100 that didn't win anything? Do they automatically win a free shoot?

Andrew Follan: No, we didn't. It's probably, it's probably not a bad way to do it. We're not, we're not big fans of doing things like that, where, like, everybody wins. It's probably good for business. But, you know, I always have my little head heights about things, and I just refuse to do some things which I don't like in retail and things like that. So no, basically, if you didn't win, you didn't win. We did send out emails to them all saying, you know, "Apologies you didn't win. If you would love to sort of book into a session. Here's our details." It was full price for them. We definitely could have offered them, like, a half price session or something like that. You know, as I said, like for business, that's probably a better way of doing it. But sometimes I do like us to do the things that make me feel good as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, for sure. So it's a real softly, softly approach you've taken.

Andrew Follan: Very, Yeah, and I mean, that's, that's always been our style, even with the weddings, we're not, we're not into a big, hard sell, or, you know, I don't think anyone really does emotional selling anymore these days, but we're just not into that sort of stuff. So everything we do is quite relaxed and quite sort of, you know, to the client, is very chilled out. Behind the scenes, it might be a little bit more non-relaxed, yeah, the public persona is very chilled out.

Andrew Hellmich: Very good. And like you guys seem to be killing with the weddings. I mean, if you're booking 35-40 weddings now and looking to drop it back off, like most people are scrambling to get more, you know, I'm seeing things on Facebook. You know, if you know someone's you know, happy to refer someone, if you book, send them my way, and all this sort of stuff. A lot of that sort of stuff happening.

Andrew Follan: Look, we're no different, mate. It's getting much, much harder to book weddings. It's not like to book those 30-40 weddings. There's nowhere near as easy as it was like three or four years ago. We're finding it tougher to book those weddings, for sure.

Andrew Hellmich: Why do you think that's the case?

Andrew Follan: Oh, look, I think, I mean, the market's definitely a little bit more saturated. There's a lot more photographers out there. But, you know, I think bride and grooms are also just much more clued on these days. They are a lot more price conscious, which, you know, you can't blame them. Weddings are expensive. I don't think we should, anyone should hide anything about that. I don't think, I mean the media. Every time you hear weddings mentioned in the media or even just on forums or blogs, and that, it's always about the cost of weddings. And it's either weddings are really expensive, or it's photographers trying to tell people why they should pay that much money for them. It's never about, you know, what weddings actually mean, or the feeling you'll get from your wedding, or the reason why you're getting married. Like, you know, every time you hear the word wedding, it's kind of using a negative tone these days for some reason, and it's always on the cost of it. So I think, you know, with both those factors, with, you know, bride and grooms, hearing that quite a bit in the media, and also having a much wider choice, the amount of clients that we in the past, we probably could have brought up to our price point may have dropped. You know, in the past, we'd have bride and grooms that are "You a little bit over our price point, you know, we're not too sure", and we could sort of bring them up, where now they can, you know, guess they can really go out and get another photographer, which is going to do an amazing job for them at a cheaper price. So they have a lot more choice definitely.

Andrew Hellmich: I think that's right. I think there's definitely more choice out there. I think there's, I think a lot of them still have the money, because I think they still spend the money on dresses and the reception and things like that. But yeah, maybe they're diving it up in different areas.

Andrew Follan: They just use it more wisely. They spread it more wisely, you know. And a lot of our clients are, the ones that don't get albums are always going on a much, much nicer honeymoon than the ones that do get albums, you know. And being like, being someone that absolutely loves to travel and has traveled quite a bit in his life. Like, I think part of me can't blame them. I would spend money on travel too. You know, I think it's got a lot to do with the way that the wedding industry is looking at the moment as well. Like, I don't know, people might not like to hear this, but I think, I think a lot of photographers just look the same these days. You know, we all use the same tools. Like a lot of photographers will use the same presets. So you look at different photographers websites, not that we look at a lot, but you sort of look at them. And you could, I don't know, every wedding is tending to look a little bit like the same. And, you know, you look at the bridal blogs, and they're all, each photographer looks exactly the same these days. So it's a, I think it's getting harder and harder to look different as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Yep, I agree. I think, I think there's a lot more good photographers out there too these days.

Andrew Follan: Oh, definitely. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, the days of photography being, no, I wasn't in the industry when they said that the photographer is a bit of a, like a dark art whatever. I don't know what that felt like, but you know? I mean, it isn't a, it isn't a big stretch to say that someone can actually pick up a camera and be a photographer. You know what I mean? There's definitely, as we know, being photographers and running the business. There's a lot, lot more to it than that. But on the surface, to a client, you can definitely make yourself look better than what you are. I think, in this industry.

Andrew Follan: Shoot 2000 images and post a couple on your website or your blog, and you look pretty good.

Andrew Follan: Yeah, you know, I mean, cameras are that good. You know, everyone always gets a little bit their backup when people say, "Oh, you must have a good camera." But the fact is, we do have good cameras, like, that's why we have them, because they are so bloody good.

Andrew Hellmich: I talked about exactly that in the last podcast. I turned up to a shoot, and yeah, I got, I showed the mother a quick shot on the back, and she said, "Oh, that must be an awesome camera."

Andrew Follan: It is, but it is like, you know, you can't get upset with that, like it is.

Andrew Hellmich: It's disappointing, but it's true what you're saying.

Andrew Follan: I can give my nine year old kid the camera and put in auto, and honestly, after I process it, he's got a damn good photo, I'm sorry to say, but, you know, I do feel that is the case. I mean, there's, as we said to, in defense, a lot of photographers, I don't want to piss everybody off today, but, you know, there is a hell of a lot more, as we all know, to wedding photography and to photography in general. It really, really is to get a professional and committed photographer is a lot, lot more to that, you know. But you know where I'm going with that.

Andrew Follan: Yeah. I do, I do, but I'm still happy if you piss everyone off, because it makes interest, makes interesting listening.

Andrew Hellmich: Sometimes I'm too good at that, so I gotta find myself back sometimes.

Andrew Hellmich: Well, look, if you're saying that things are tougher than what they've ever been, I was going to ask you about what's working for marketing, but I might put a twist on that. What's not working these days? What don't you do now that you used to do to book weddings? Well, what wouldn't you do?

Andrew Follan: I think wedding blogs are still good, but I think the whole directory, the wedding blog directory thing, is a little bit, to us anyway, for us personally, is a little bit dead. In saying that, I think it's really, really important to know that what works for one photographer will not work for another photographer, or might work for another photographer. There's probably photographers out there that are killing it from wedding blog directories.

Andrew Hellmich: That's fine. You tell me exactly like for you guys, just worry about the phones. What? Yeah, what wouldn't you do these days? I mean, you said you're running Facebook ads, or you tried that.

Andrew Follan: Yeah. So, so what we wouldn't do? We wouldn't do magazine ads.

Andrew Hellmich: Right.

Andrew Follan: So not that it's really hard, because we've never actually done magazine ads, but, like, we wouldn't do that. We're not really doing that much different. And you know, maybe that is why we find a little bit tougher these days to book weddings. But you know, in the past, we've always relied very heavily on Facebook. We've relied heavily on previous bride and groom referrals, and also other referrals from other photographers. I think getting a really strong friendship with people, I don't like to use the word network, because, to be honest, the people that we bounce work to and from are mates in the industry, you know. They're people that, even if, like, we would be giving them work regardless, you know. So I think you know, and we're still doing that. And most of our, most of our weddings, still do come from either previous bride and groom referrals. I think that's still the biggest one for us, and we work hard on that, like we definitely try to get our bride and grooms talking about us and wanting to refer their friends to us.

Andrew Hellmich: Do you offer an incentive?

Andrew Follan: No, we don't. We just give them a really good service.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay. So you hope, you're hoping they talk about you?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, definitely, it's always in hope. Yeah, definitely. We used to offer incentives and to be honest, I don't really, I don't think it really worked. Maybe it was just in my mind, but I sort of felt like it cheapened our brand a little bit, because it was sort of like, you know, "Please talk about us, and we'll give you something for it", where, I think if you've just done an awesome job and you've treated them well, and, you know you can stay in touch with them afterwards, not like being best friends or anything, but just, you know, again, through newsletters, Facebook and things like that, that they will just organically talk about you if they've been happy with you.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, for sure. No, I totally understand that. So, so you have basically have everyone on your on your newsletter list, or do you segment them between wedding and portrait clients?

Andrew Follan: No, we send it out to everybody. A good example of why is that, when we did our, we did a newsletter portrait promotion maybe three months ago, and we got two, two full bookings from that, from people that our previous bride and grooms had forwarded the newsletter onto who had just had kids and said, "This is our wedding photographers, but they also do portraits. You guys should book them in." We just, we just shot one of them last weekend. They came in for their review session yesterday, and they spend like $800 which, as I said, like that's where we think that our averages will slowly go down when we start getting clients from different areas. But yeah, if we had have sent that just to the families on our website, and not our previous bride and grooms on our newsletter, we would never have got those bookings.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, right. Now that makes, that makes perfect sense. That's great. That's great. Now I want to be conscious of your time. I've got 10 quick questions, but I've got two other questions I've got to get to before we get to those. You're right for these?

Andrew Follan: Yeah

Andrew Hellmich: Your website, it definitely looks different to other photographers.

Andrew Follan: It does. It does so..

Andrew Hellmich: On purpose?

Andrew Follan: Yeah. Oh, hell yeah, absolutely, yeah, you know, again, like a good mate of mine, Darren, once told me that if, "When everybody's zigging, you should zag", and we definitely live by that. And we were, like, not, not the first by any means, but we were one of the first to way back, like, you know, six or seven years ago, we went to just a blog site. We didn't have a website. We just had a blog site. I think Jessica Claire in America. We saw her doing it. We went, "That's awesome. We don't want to blog our website." And at the time, the majority of wedding, the majority of photographers, had a website and the blog. So we said, "You know what? We just want just the blog." Worked really, really well for us clients really appreciate it. Wind the clock to nowadays, every single photographer has a blog, but very rarely do any of them have websites. So we said, "You know what? It's time to go back. Let's have a website with a blog behind it. "First point was, yes, it does look different to everybody else's and when a when a client goes on to our website, they're like, "Wow, okay, this is different." It's not the same again as everything they're seeing. And two, it actually lets us highlight the weddings that we actually want people to see. The problem with blogs is you might shoot the most amazing wedding and you want everyone to see it, and everyone will see it for about three or four days, until you blog again, or maybe a week, or maybe two weeks, but after like, two months like no one sees that straight away. They might find it in your blog, or they might find it through SEO and Googling and that. But if someone comes to your blog, they don't see that. And you know, let's be honest, not every single wedding you shoot is your best wedding. So you might shoot two weddings that you're happy to put up on your blog, but aren't your absolute best weddings. If that's the first things that your clients are seeing, then maybe that's not the best thing. So we can move back to the website where people see, you know, the weddings that we want them to see. We've still got the blog. It's still there. Works great for SEO, but, yeah, that was the main reason why we went and also we just wanted to look more like us. We didn't again, we didn't we wanted to look a little bit, little bit more urban, a little bit more edgy, different to all the bright sort of wedding blogs out there.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, it definitely stands out, that's for sure. I mean, when I first Googled, you went, "Oh, wow, that looks different." So yeah, I'm sure it's got that effect.

Andrew Follan: It's doing its job then.

Andrew Hellmich: Definitely. Now I want to, just in the very beginning, when we first started recording, you mentioned that something called the portrait formula, or you found the portrait formula. What is it like?

Andrew Follan: I'm finding it. I just said. I'm finding.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, yeah.

Andrew Follan: Look, look, when I say formula, it's more about what, what we shoot and how we shoot it. And, you know, I love shooting families, but I love shooting kids more without the parents.

Andrew Hellmich: And you make that pretty clear on your website too, don't you like it says..

Andrew Follan: Yeah, definitely. And you know, 90% of our photo our shoot is of the kids, and then the last you know, 5% or 10% is of the actual family itself. That doesn't always generate the most sales, because, you know, mum and dads do want the stand there look at the camera smiling, you know, at the end of the day. And especially grandparents definitely want those ones. So we do get those traditional photos, and we do show those photos on our website as well. Just like the weddings, we do traditional photos for weddings as well. We're not always creative and arty. And that's, I mean, we're probably the least creative and arty people there are for weddings, you know, we very shoot for our clients rather than for us. So, yeah, so for us, the formula is a little bit more about showing the kid, the children, and making the children look really good. Now, a lot of photographers will say that's the wrong thing to do. And, yeah, it can be, sometimes it does. You know, it doesn't work. But for us and the clients that we're attracting at the moment, it's working quite well. But the formula, I think was also going into the marketing is you've got to be just constantly, constantly marketing portraits for us anyway, and maybe it's because we're just starting out in portraits, or just starting to really push it and build it. The portrait inquiries don't just come our way, like weddings do, you know we can sit back and wait for a wedding inquiry to come. We're still, sorry I shouldn't say it like that, we're still marketing, we're still out there, but we know that they're going to come. But if we don't send newsletters or run promotions or talk to people about it, the portrait inquiries won't come in for us yet.

Andrew Follan: Right. I think that's pretty standard across the board. I think you work harder and longer for portraits.

Andrew Follan: I think so yeah, and that's what we're getting our head around, is actually having to do a lot more marketing than we ever have had to do before.

Andrew Hellmich: It sounds like you're willing to sacrifice some sales to be able to shoot the way that you guys want to shoot.

Andrew Follan: Ah, yes. And no, yeah. I mean, some families, you just know that they've booked you without really understanding how we shoot. So I'm quite good at adapting the way I shoot on a shoot, like we don't, we don't necessarily have a standard style, like a lot of photographers do, and I think that's a good thing. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. And the same with our weddings, like we don't have, like, a wedding style, like when we talk to our clients with weddings, we talk to them about our style is like their personalities. It's not, it's not our style. It takes a little bit of getting used to when we say that. But, and it's the same with portraits like you know, I'll start shooting our style and what I want to shoot, but if during on the shoot, I can tell that the parents want more of the traditional looks, sit there, smile, looking at the camera. I'll do that because, you know, we still make sales. You'll still make it worth, worth your while doing it.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, cool. So you'll just adapt on the fly. If you, if you get a feeling that the parents want more photos of the parents, then you'll do that.

Andrew Follan: Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Hellmich: All right, mate. You ready for these 10 quick questions?

Andrew Follan: All right. This is like the hot dollar or something like that. Okay.

Andrew Follan: You betcha a lot, a lot of followers. Oh yeah, right.

Andrew Hellmich: 10 quick questions, 10 quick answers, 3-2-1, go! Canon or Nikon?

Andrew Follan: Nikon

Andrew Hellmich: Favorite lens and why?

Andrew Follan: 7200 because I just, I don't know. I just absolutely love it. It's just one of the very first lenses I bought, and just use it all the time. But no, I am a 35 mil. Can I have 2? 7200 and 35 mil 1.4, ah no 1.2, 1.2 I think it is.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, which one mainly for portraits, and which one mainly for weddings?

Andrew Follan: Weddings, 90% of weddings will be on those two lenses. For me, portraits, I'll shoot a lot of the 7200 because I love to compress the background with a little kid. And I actually find that a lot of photographers like to be, these aren't really quick questions. Sorry Andrew.

Andrew Hellmich: It's fine.

Andrew Follan: A lot of photographers will find that it's really great to be close to a kid and keep their engagement where, personally, the way I shoot, I love being away from the kid, but then being really loud and making sure that the kid is like, having a lot of fun because I'm so loud because I'm further away from him, rather than talking quietly. So yeah, it works well for me, the 7200 for portraits.

Andrew Hellmich: What's one thing that you can look back on in your business and think, yeah, that's when we took a big step forward, when we did this?

Andrew Follan: When I bought my first camera. No, oh wow, that's a really hard question.

Andrew Hellmich: Did you run a marketing campaign? Did you put your prices up at some stage? Did you go to an AIPP seminar? Everything just clicked.

Andrew Follan: Do you know what? Like maybe this is a really bad answer. I don't know, but to be honest with you, it actually was like when we gave up the job and I went and bought my first professional camera, like, up until then, I had, you know, prosumer cameras, and I bought my first camera, and that, that was the time that it actually really did change for us. I think after that, it was really just a constant, just a constant grind to make the business work. So I don't really think there's been one particular thing that's really stood out. Sorry, mate.

Andrew Hellmich: That's cool. That's fine. What software do you use for your batching, editing, renaming and renumbering?

Andrew Follan: So for culling, we cull in Photo Mechanic. Everything else is done in Lightroom. The only thing I'll take into Photoshop is if I want to clone something, because Lightroom sucks at cloning.

Andrew Hellmich: If you had to close down your business today, you're going to set up in Perth and you couldn't have the same domain name. You had to start from scratch. What would you do? What would you do in that first week?

Andrew Hellmich: Sit in a corner and rock back and forth.

Andrew Hellmich: Say, go surfing.

Andrew Follan: I would probably would. If I'm there, I'd go surfing.

Andrew Hellmich: What's going to get business the quickest?

Andrew Follan: Marketing. You've just got to market yourself, you know, even now, like, you know, I absolutely do admire, I'm sure there's photographers out there that just say we don't have to market, we don't have to market. That's awesome. You know, we went through a bit of a phase where we were sort of very similar to that. I think marketing is a massive thing, and marketing smartly not just throwing money everywhere.

Andrew Follan: Okay, so if you had to pick one marketing Avenue, what would it be?

Andrew Follan: At the moment, we still find Facebook is still quite good, so we would definitely use that to our advantage.

Andrew Hellmich: Just posting images or sponsored posts?

Andrew Follan: No, we, I think we did sponsored posts once, and we got a lot of people from India liking our page. We won't do that again, cost me 10 bucks, I think. I think and also, we're just starting to look into Google AdWords a little bit as well. We haven't done that in the past, so we're just starting to sort of explore that a little bit. So that would be the way, I think, if you're going to move into a new city, expos can actually still work, the right type of expos. I think you've got to pick, if you're going to do an expo, you got to pick the right one for your brand. I wouldn't just be doing anyone. There's definitely something out there that suit some bigger studios, and then there's some out there that fit smaller, home based studios. Actually, yeah, that could be something that I could get back a couple of questions and say that that's been quite good as well, actually, is that we, we've done two expos in the seven or eight years, and both of them we've done really well from. We should probably do more, shouldn't we? But no.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, were they in the early years?

Andrew Follan: We did one in our, like in our second year, yeah, in our second year. And we booked, I think, 11 or 12 weddings directly from that. And then we had a big flow on effect later on. And then we did one for maybe three or four years ago, the One Fine Day ones. We did the first one of those, and again, we did really well from that, I think we booked like seven or eight from that.

Andrew Hellmich: Do you watch what other photographers are doing?

Andrew Follan: Not really. No. I am, I have my mates in the industry, which I like to look at their stuff. I don't really draw a lot of inspiration or ideas from, like, the big names. I totally admire the big names. I think what they do in the industry is just incredible. And the way they run their businesses, you know, is amazing. But I think that Sarah and I are so different, the way we come across than the way, who we are, you know, is that it doesn't really suit our style. And, you know, go back to that, that referral network as well. Like, once you've got some really good mates in the industry and some good people that you're just, you know, you would be friends with outside the industry anyway, I'd much prefer to, like, look at their work and cheer them on, than the big names, to be honest.

Andrew Follan: So you guys weren't married that long ago? Who? How did you pick your wedding photographer?

Andrew Follan: Oh, we were married 13 years ago, mate.

Andrew Hellmich: That's not that long, isn't it?

Andrew Follan: Are you married? 13 years feels like, well, no, sorry, Sarah doesn't.. Ah, no, I love Sarah. You know, way back then we weren't, we weren't doing photography. Photography is very important to us though, Sarah knew that she really wanted a good photographer, so we actually had David Oliver shoot our wedding photography. I'm pretty sure nearly everybody knows who David Oliver is, you know, it just wasn't really a question. It was just like, yeah, he's one of the best and yeah, we spent more money than we could afford on our photographer, too.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice. That's great. That's great. Mate, last question, what's, what's, what's an embarrassing moment that you're happy to share that happened while shooting?

Andrew Follan: I'm so glad you asked this, this question, Andrew, because I haven't had a chance to play Sarah out yet this whole and you're finally giving me the chance to do it. So we, Sarah's just gonna, it's just all about Sarah. Okay, we're gonna tell the story. 100% honest to everything. Every word I say is true. So she's rocked up to the groom's house. Like when we go to weddings, I shoot the bride, and Sarah shoots the groom's getting ready. So she's rocked up to the groom's house. There's some decorations on the outside of the house. I'll try to keep this quick too, Andrew. There's some decorations out on the house. So she's gone into the front lawn to take a photo of the house before she even knocked on the door, before she walked in. She hadn't actually met the groom yet, so for whatever reason, when they came in and they booked us, only I met with them for that night, so she didn't sort of know who the groom was, or he didn't. They hadn't seen each other before, so she's on the front lawn. She's taking a couple of photos of the house and the decorations, and she just sort of felt this tingling in her leg. And she was a little bit like, "That's really weird. What's that?" And then her leg just started just burning and throbbing. And she was like, "This is really bad." Like, what is this? And her leg was literally just on fire, she says. So she's run up to the front door. She's like, knock, knock, knock, knock. Does like as much as she possibly can. The mum has, like, opened the door. Sarah hasn't even introduced herself. The boys were there, like, as one of those houses he opened up. It just goes into this big open area. The boys are there. Their mom's there. Sarah's just running. And the first thing she has said is, "I gotta go to the bathroom. I gotta take my pants off" and just ran. And she's bolted, and she's just like, they're just standing looking at her. And who is this crazy woman anyway? Turns out she's ripped her pants off and she's got like, fire ants all up her leg from the front, and they're just biting into her. So she's got them all off and her, yeah, her leg just like," she came out of the toilet. She's like, "Sorry, I'm Sarah. I'm the photographer. By the way, you have fire ants in your front lawn." And the mum's like, "Yeah, we could have told you that." So, yeah, I think that was, that was kind of a funny story for Sarah. I'll leave my, if anyone wants to know my embarrassing stories, they can. They can buy me a coffee, but I'm more than happy to give the world Sarah's one.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I thought you're gonna say it was the wrong house, as well.

Andrew Follan: Done that before. I'll tell you real quick. When I've walked into the groom's house, because on our run sheet, I read the address wrong. So I'm driving to the bride's house. I've gone into the groom's house. Didn't even click the, where the hell I was, so professional, right? "Hey guys, how you guys going? Good, good.", you know. And then I'm so like, "The girls at the back, or are they getting ready?" And they're just like, I know. They're like, they're at the other house. And I'm like, "Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's cool. Just came to say, good day. Make sure, you guys are good. I'm just heading over there now", just quickly thinking on the spot, you know, "All right, guys, Sarah will be here soon, so, you know, treat her well. See you guys soon at the ceremony", and just got the hell out of there, and then just, you know, drive 100 miles an hour to the bride's house as if nothing happens. Kind of embarrassing.

Andrew Hellmich: I ate your coffee. That was awesome.

Andrew Follan: Double cappuccino.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it, but people are going to want to check out your website, and they may have it. Hopefully, if they got a question or two, they'll post them on the, in the show notes after the episode. But where can they check out your website and where can they find you?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, look. So the website's www, dot. Does anyone say that anymore? thefollans.com.au. Follans can be hard to spell, so T-H-E-F-O, double L, A-N-S.com.au, check us out on Facebook. It's just yeah, Facebook.com/thefollans. We're not really big on Twitter. The only real social media we use is Instagram and Facebook. So check us out on there if you want to. And, yeah, look, please ask any questions. You know, we're 100% open book. We don't mind sharing what we know. Can I put, can I put a really quick plug in for the AIPP, Andrew?

Andrew Hellmich: Look, I was gonna say you're actually talking at a seminar coming up with Ian Wilkinson, aren't you?

Andrew Follan: Yeah, we are. So, like, I think, I think it's, yeah, two weeks’ time, on the 24th of October, or three, either three or two weeks. Two weeks. We got, like, a wedding workshop, which we're running with Ian. So it's gonna be awesome sharing the stage with Ian from Brisbane, 24th of October in Sydney. If you haven't checked it out yet, jump on. There's still some tickets available, so it'd be great to see people there. And again, we're very, very much about crowd interaction. So we want people to bring their questions, ask, we don't just stand there, and talk for an hour or two hours to them. We want them to ask questions so we can actually answer their specific questions rather than just listen to us talk.

Andrew Hellmich: For sure, that's awesome. Well, I'll add links to everything that you just mentioned in the show notes, and for overseas listeners that have got a question, hopefully I'll post them after the show notes, and you can pop back there, or I can chase you up for an answer.

Andrew Follan: Yeah, definitely. We'll check it out.

Andrew Hellmich: You've been so generous, Andrew, thanks so much. And say thanks to Sarah as well.

Andrew Follan: I don't think she wants me to say thanks, but yeah, no, thanks Andrew for having us, really honored to be on here, mate. So yeah, thanks very much.

Andrew Hellmich: Awesome. Chat soon.

Andrew Follan: Cheers, mate. Bye.

 
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